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I'll refrain from picking games i played in my youth alot and just pick some from my (somewhat) newer library. Games I played and replayed the last few years for me would be world of warcraft, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (and expansions) The elder scrolls: Oblivion and neverwinter nights I and II. And as of late I got back into the FPS genre again with the release of Team Fortress II. That game just pushes all the right buttons

And then some console and handheld games like Grand Tourismo 3 and monsterhunter freedom series

It's hard to get a decent S in such a small space without gradients

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Don't let the christmas hat fool you! That ain't no santa!

It looks good to me, but then again, I didn't see anything wrong with the previous version.

Phantasmagoria did have a "not so subtle" hint option if i remember correctly. Altho, this wasn't an actual inventory item

Well, it would be a shame to throw all that beautifull artwork away. However making it yourself does have its significant benefits.



Altho BG's are not my Forte', I did a partial drawover of your background. It's currently an excellent rough scetch, and just needs a good cleaning up of the rought edges and a bit of detail worked into.
First I erased the black out lines. Then to add detail I tried to keep it as simple as possible, using just a few colors to give the feeling of depth. I just roughly drawed the dark lines freehand into the rock.
I did the same thing for the black forground, giving the a less flat apearance.

Unfortunatly I can't help you with suggestions for the golden bird. Tried various things but I can't make it as shiney as the orginal.

Firstly, here's a tutorial on drawing starfields (ie, space):
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html

Ah, thanks for that tutorial link. I was looking for something similar myself. Normaly I'm an MSpaint user 4lyfe, but I think I can make an exception for this one 

Now this looks very promising. I really dig the style, and i have to agree with GG here. the second bg is the better one. the first lacks the strong contrast of the second one. And it's way too "clean" and straight lined compared to the second one. The sketchy look of the second one is alot nicer and aesthetically pleasing.

Also, personally I would rather use a cleaned up pixelated version of your main character (which is quite a nice design btw). I find those simpler to use and draw animations for.

*edit*
Did a quick drawover

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Not a bad sprite to be honest. I did alter it's face and hindleg a bit, to make it more round.

It also might help to pick a fixed point for your light source. I gave you 2 quick draw overs with one having a right source, and the other one getting his light from the left.

And lastly: I would advice you not to draw whiskers on such a small scale.

Mine is obvious enough I think. If you don't know him, just search for AVGN.

It's good to see such progress on your sprite. Personally I don't have any problems with her backview, the shading is pretty good as it is.

This game has it's troubles, but if you're willing to ignore those thing you'll find it is actually quite nice and stylish.

For a fun review of the game, look at Zero punctuations psychonaughts review. A warning in advance, he is quite rude in his reviews.

Thanks, I'll try those out tomorrow. *Her* left arm, or the arm on the left (like you did with your paintover)?

her arm on the left, like in the paintover Sorry about that

It already looks alot better, I would make the eyes a bit bigger tho and you should clean the skin colour up a bit. It still has the indistinguisable contrast differences. Also: you might want to try putting her left arm 1 pixel closer to her body. I think it would make her posture look better

I'm guessing we're on a mountain range, a house to the left, a light house in the distance and an airship.

My only observation is that the middle and the right are quite empty. Maybe add some crates? Giving it the illusion it's cargo for the airship

[Excess colours]

   
I'm afraid I went a bit overboard with the drawover, but hopefully you can take a few pointers from it (most have been mentioned). The things I altered were:

Excess colours
You used alot of different "almost black" colours, almost indistinguisable from eachother. Same goes for the shirt, her hair and her skin. I altered those for fewer colors in total, and gave them a higher contrast from eachother.

Posture
I don't know if you intended it this way, but you made her look very butch.  Her shoulders are the main cause for this, so I nibbled a few pixels off to give her a bit more slender shoulders
I also altered her posture alittle bit by making it asymetrical and in the process made her legs (1 pixel ) a bit longer. I altered the left arm and leg to give the impression of a 3/4 frontal view.
Her face was altered (but not that drasticly, it still has your original shape but without the ears) and gave her a bit more hair. I used 2 pixels for her eyes instead of 1, and put them a bit further apart to lessen the "pinhead eyes"  effect. I Also removed her red lips, but you could add that again if you wished.

As a last note: I have to agree with Jimmy. The size of this character is quite limited and makes it hard to create a decent looking sprite. A bit bigger would ease the process alot

Well, time is up. So without further ado I'll anounce the outcome of our little skirmish.

1th place goes to: Monsieur OUXX
2nd place goes to: Gilbot
3th place goes to: mouthuvmine

And thanks to everyone who entered.

Wow you guys really scare me away,

Winning isn't the actual goal of these competitions. They are really more of a fun way to  practice your skills. So don't be scared to enter any of these, this isn't a "lol u suck"community. You're more likely to get positive feedback from people.

Episode 4 seems to be considered the best thing about Season One. It certainly got better reviews than the first episode.

What better way to promote the series than with its best episode?

It made me wonder aswell why they would put episode 4 up for free instead of 1. Never read any reviews of the games, but that would be logical.

I don't know if this was already being brought to anyones attention (couldn't find it with the search function) but the 4th episode of sam and max is free and up for grabs.

http://www.fileplanet.com/182132/180000/fileinfo/Sam-&-Max:-Abe-Lincoln-Must-Die!-(Free-Game)

It was quite short, but fun.